Steinbeck's writing suggestions

Artichoke Annie has an interesting post up today. It's about John Steinbeck. The post lists several of his suggestions for writers. One of them is:

"If you are using dialogue--say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech."

I never do this. As I write dialogue, I hear the words spoken by the character. Each character's voice and way of speaking is unique. I truly hear these voices and I don't have to do anything special to make this happen. So I've never read dialogue aloud.

But some of the suggestions are spot-on. For instance: don't edit as you write. Just get the damn scene down on paper or screen. You can always go back and edit it. For now, you're writing.

Writing and editing are two very different things that probably utilize separate (though overlapping) brain areas. They're that disparate. When you write, you should write. After you're done, you can spend the rest of your life editing your book. Almost happened to me. Well, okay, it was just a couple of years. Still.

(And hey, there's a shout-out to Steinbeck in Xmas Carol. Let's see if any XC readers can identify it.)

Next up: "The Worlds"

For the past few days, I've been reading a draft of a sci-fi novel I wrote a few years ago. It's called The Worlds -- which is also the name of this blog. The idea behind The Worlds is so far-reaching, it's startling. My aim is to publish the book in 2013 and publish the second book in the trilogy the year after that. (Like The Worlds, it already exists in draft form.) And then I'll write the final book in the series. Xmas Carol is a lot of fun; make no mistake about that. But The Worlds is the joint.

I've got my work cut out for me. The Worlds was my first attempt at writing a novel and I didn't know any of the tricks yet. To my now-seasoned eyes, it sounds clunky -- but I can fix it. I learned so much while writing Xmas Carol. My task now is to apply those lessons to this book. It should be fun because I love the story. It is so wild and appealing!

So next up: The Worlds.

Timelines and suspense novels

Xmas Carol, my horror novel, is suspenseful -- which means the timeline is critical. Everything has to fall into place, smoothly and easily.

While reading the novel this week I became aware of a subtle timeline snafu. As a result, I changed a few dates and moved four scenes into new positions in the book. Now I'm reading the two chapters in which those scenes appear, to make sure there are no conflicts. Other than this, things look good. Those never-ending edits seem to have done the trick. I'm very pleased.

Almost there, kiddies. Once I fix the timeline, the book will be done. And then I'll have to face unknown horrors at Amazon and the iBook store as I try to format my book to meet their specifications. I'm not looking forward to that. But hey, I'm almost done!

The book sounds good

After the last major edit I'm reading Xmas Carol, my horror novel, without changing a word. I'm on chapter nine and I expect smooth sailing ahead. Won't be long now. Hang on.

By the way, another person is reading the book. She tells me she can't put it down. We love to hear that stuff. I haven't had one negative reaction to the book. Not one. Coming soon, kiddies.

A painful task

I just removed all the copyrighted Xmas carol lyrics from Xmas Carol, my horror novel, and replaced them with lyrics from public domain Xmas carols. After I tossed the religious public-domain carols aside, all that was left was:

Jingle Bells
Deck the Halls
The Twelve Days of Xmas
We Wish You a Merry Xmas.

Slim pickins -- truly slim. At least The Twelve Days of Xmas is irritating. I was able to use that to good effect.

Originally (i.e., before I realized the public domain issue was going to clunk me on the head) I chose the carols with care, making sure each lyric went perfectly with a scene. It was difficult to toss all that out the window and be forced to use these four tunes.

It's a sad day in Xmas Carol land. Truly. But it needed to be done and I've done it. Sob.

Editing workflow: hardware edition

Yes, of course I'm still editing Xmas Carol. I will until the day I publish the book. But this post is about hardware.

Much to my surprise, I find that using my iPod Touch and Macbook Air, I'm able to edit very efficiently. What I do is send the book to the iPod Touch, where I read it in iBooks. The shocking thing is that I can grasp the text much better on the Touch screen, compared to seeing it in Scrivener, my writing program. It's just easier to grok. I'm not sure why.

In any case, I read the book on the Touch and when I find something I want to change, I do it on the Air in Scrivener. Now and then, I turn the Scrivener file into a fresh file for iBooks and check the changes to see if they read well. As a result of this seemingly simple process, I'm doing the best editing I've ever done. The book sounds much, much better.

Any other writers out there? What tricks do you use when editing?

Paragraph death match

Things are great in Xmas Carol land. I like what I read, no matter where in the book I stop. At this point I'm just wandering through the text and enjoying the scenery . . . but every now and then an ornery paragraph surfaces and it and I engage in a death match.

I swear, at times I'll spend over two hours on one paragraph. It drives me crazy. There I am, happily driving through the book when I have to pull up next to a paragraph that doesn't sound right (or doesn't work logically, which is even worse). In any case, I don't like the paragraph. I'm mad at it. So I smack it around and try to say the thing every which-what way . . . and this goes on and on and on. Today I wrangled with one for over an hour and finally highlighted the whole damn thing and clicked "delete". Sometimes that's the only way out.

But despite my grappling with the occasional rude paragraph, the book is done. My sister is reading it, my nephew is reading it and my brother-in-law is reading it. Mostly, I want to see if they notice any typos, but of course it's always fun to get people's reactions. My nephew hasn't read it before, though my sister and her husband have. Thankfully, the latter two will find this version quite different.

By the way, speaking of fabulous catches (which is what editing is all about) I found an awful typo yesterday. I swear, some typos are the kind that can haunt your forever. I almost let one through:

Here's the set-up: a female character wondered why she was dressing with such care for a date. The final line in the paragraph was the answer to her question. It was supposed to say: "He was worth it." But reading the scene yesterday I found that it said: "He was worth tit." And this paragraph led right into a sex scene. Lord! It would have looked like I meant to say that. Typos from hell.

Anyway, all is well. The book should be out in a week or so -- as soon as my final pre-publication reviews roll in. (Read quickly, people!) Thanks for hanging in with me, everybody.

Meanwhile, back at the salt mines

Turda salt mine, Romania.

In the earliest days of this blog, I wrote a few posts that outlined my approach to novel-writing. I'm not the sort to heed other people's advice so I invented the process from whole cloth.

I had questions and I questioned everything. First person or third person? Must I include an antagonist? How would I avoid the boring pitfalls most novels fall into (like sci-fi novels including evil government agents in every single story)? How should I write dialogue? And how the heck do you structure a scene? It was all new to me. When I started writing, I didn't know a thing.

You're alone when you write

When making art, aim high.

It seems obvious -- of course you're alone when you write. But I mean you're really alone, to the point where you may as well be writing in outer space. When you go to that computer (or take pen and notebook in hand), there is no one there but you.

No one will write your book for you and it won't write itself. You are the one who will make or break your novel. I'll say it again: you're alone.

But another part of this deal is that you have complete freedom. From start to finish, no one but you is in charge. I like this so much and as I close in on the final manuscript of Xmas Carol I can feel the power of this proposition. The final form, the words as they'll be written in stone -- will come only from me.

It's like sculpting, this final stage of creating the book. Borrowing Michelangelo's imagery, I'm carving away the excess stone to reveal the sculpture of the story within. And in the process, I too am discovering its final form. I love this process.

Yes, I'm still editing Xmas Carol

I keep saying I'm "editing" Xmas Carol but a more accurate statement would be that I'm rewriting it. I'm always rewriting it. It's apparently what I do.

Our own Artichoke Annie suggested a few changes after reading it, and I agreed because her ideas were good. So I dove back in to make the changes . . . which of course ended up with me making more changes, and more changes, and . . . So yes, I'm rewriting the book.

I used to look down on writers who took three years to write a book. After all, I wrote three books in 18 months. Ah, but that was before I began "editing" the books into final form. Xmas Carol is the one I chose to work on first -- and I'm still doing it many months later. I started writing Xmas Carol on January 28, 2010. So I've been working on it for about 19 months, and I figure it's going to take another month or so to complete. Whew.

This brings me back to a quote I see often on writing blogs: "Great books are not written, they are rewritten." I'm rewriting the book, not editing it. And it's a good thing. Each time I go through it, the book becomes better.

Right now, I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book. And when I'm done I'm going to go through it again. And I'm going to cut, cut, cut. I am so rewriting this book.

Hang on. I promise it will be done at some point. Really.

Xmas Carol is finished

Yesterday I finished my final edit of Xmas Carol. Today I'm printing the book (okay, my sister is printing it) and tomorrow I'll send a copy to our own Artichoke Annie, who has agreed to read it. No one else has read the final version. Annie will be the first. Well, okay: I also gave an ePub version to Carmine, who wants to reread the book -- always a good sign.

I can't believe I'm done!

Xmas Carol is almost done

I have only three more scenes to edit in my horror book, Xmas Carol. I'm standing right in front of the finish line.

The reason I'm writing about this today rather than tomorrow is that as soon as I'm done, I'll be sad. It's difficult to part with a story, it really is. I live in the world I write about; it's my home. And I will feel sad when the day after tomorrow arrives, and I will no longer be working on Xmas Carol.

That's why I'm announcing the "happy" news today. By 5 pm tomorrow, you can shout it from the rafters: Xmas Carol is done!

How goes the Xmas Carol edit, Keith?

Thanks for asking. It's going very well. Yesterday I edited seven scenes in chapter ten of Xmas Carol -- a big load for one day. I'm smack dab in the middle of the climax, which makes the editing fun.

It sounds good. The pace of the book is much better, after the series of edits. The story feels like one smooth movement that stretches from start to finish. Hopefully I've included enough attractions along the way to hold the reader's interest and pull her all the way to the ending. I think so; it seems to be an easy read, which is what I've been aiming for all along.

Pretty soon I'll be done, in about a week, I think. Now, tell me again why I should send this to a publisher? They give you, at most, about $18,000 for a book these days, and they keep the rest of the loot. Think about this: that's a one-time payment for your book.

But if you self-publish, you get the majority of the money -- forever. If your book sells, it will never stop paying you money. Doesn't this sound like going through a publisher is no longer a smart move? I'll have to make a decision within a couple of weeks. Sigh. The business end of writing is not at all interesting to me. (The business of anything bores me.)

The book sounds terrific. It seems to me this should be my only concern.

Xmas Carol update

I'm still toiling in the trenches. At the moment, I'm at the end of chapter seven in Xmas Carol. There are twelve chapters. It's looking good -- that's the short version. 

"But what are you doing on this fateful pass through the book, Keith?"

Thank you for asking. That was so sweet of you. Well, I'm reading it -- and this in itself is very important. I'm getting a good sense of how it sounds now, which is exciting. I'm satisfied with most of the scenes but I'll still have to rework a few, even after I finish this go-through.

What happened is I cleared away a ton of clutter on my last pass through the book. Things are so much more streamlined now, and this lets me see things that still need to be done. It's like when you clean a room. Afterward, you can easily see anything that's out of place. That's where I'm at now. There's nothing huge to fix but I do want to alter this and that.

So the game goes on and it won't end until I'm happy with every page of the book. This has been your report from the trenches of Xmas Carol Land.

Writing is apparently hard work

I thought I had it made when I managed to write three books in two years. A wunderkind, right? (Never mind the age, smarty.) But there's still a ton of work to do after you finish writing a book. A ton!

Today and yesterday, I spent the whole day rewriting one scene (the same one). Even after I beat it up all day yesterday, I knew I'd have to return to it today, and I did. The scene, I'm happy to report, reads well now.

But wow, there's a ton of editing to do after you "finish" writing your book. I've read that great books aren't written, they are rewritten. And though I have no pretensions to greatness, I'm learning it takes many, many passes before a book reads well. (At least, the books I write.)

After all this time, I'm only on Chapter 5, scene 5. The book is 12 chapters so it seems I may miss my self-imposed deadline. When the first Spring training games occur on the 24th, I'm still going to be "reading" this book. Such is life. I'll do what it takes to get my books into final form. But jeez, it's a long haul!

Reading Xmas Carol

I'm continuing to have a pleasant experience reading Xmas Carol. I'm somewhere in the fourth chapter (of twelve) and I'm enjoying the time I spend with the book. It reads well. Am I Charles Dickens? Definitely not. But the story works. I'll settle for that.

I had a nightmare time editing one of the scenes a couple of days ago. I rewrote it again and again for the better part of a day.  But I haven't encountered another like that. I think I must have missed that one scene during last month's huge edit of the book. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

So Xmas Carol sounds good. This is such a nice thing to be able to report. I want to complete the reading (or edit or whatever it is that I'm doing) before the start of baseball's Spring training. I use baseball as my writing clock -- I have to have such and such done by Spring training, another thing done by the playoffs, etc. I'm happy to report that I'm on schedule.

Then during the regular baseball season, I'll try to finish up my first sci-fi book, The Worlds. The sci-fi trilogy (of which The Worlds is the first book) is my real baby. Xmas Carol was fun to write but the main act is definitely The Worlds. It's exciting to think about getting back to it.

The Xmas Carol saga

I read the first chapter of Xmas Carol and it sounded fine. Was I still changing things as I read it? Of course; anything can be improved. But the changes I'm making are minor. The last big edit seems to have done the trick.

I plan to read the rest of the book at a leisurely pace. Because of all the editing, I'm painfully familiar with every sentence in the book. This is not helpful when you're trying to get a sense of a novel. If only I could read it cold, but that's impossible. On the other hand, you will get that opportunity. It's weird but I envy my readers because I will never know what it's like to read Xmas Carol, not knowing the story beforehand. I never noticed this before. It seems to be a hidden penalty for authors.

It's been a slog but I'm almost there. Pretty soon I'll write the cover letter and synopsis and send it out. Then my poor little book will be on its own in the world, utterly alone and quite vulnerable. You try to raise them right but you never know how things will turn out for them when they finally leave home. Still, you've got to kick them out sometime.

Xmas Carol is done

Xmas Carol, my horror novel, is done. Phew. I just did a spell check on it and I'm going to print it and read it, though I may put that off for a few days. In the meanwhile, I'm going to give it to my cousin to read.

One of the odd things about having test readers is that they all read different versions of the book. You give it to one or two readers, get their comments and make appropriate changes. Then you give it to the next reader, and so on. Cousin Carmine is at the end of the line, so he'll have the best read of anyone.

Sigh. What a long job that was. But it's over!

I got blistiz on my fingiz

This Xmas Carol edit is killing me but I'm happy to report that I have only nine more scenes to edit. I'm down to single digits!

And then I'm going to print and read it, though I might take a day or two off first. I'm beat.

Timelines: Aaaarrrrgh!

Timelines are a difficult aspect of writing fiction, at least for me. I create scenes and assemble them into a book, and it all makes logical sense to me. But then at some point I have to fit the fictional activities on a real calendar. Because in the end, the story must be in synch -- all the clocks have to chime in unison.

As a writer, you just write. You know your story needs this or that, so you write scenes and make those things happen. Often these scenes are not anchored in time. They just float around in book-space until you nail them to a clock. The problem comes when, even using a trowel, you can't jam all the scenes into a coherent timeline. 

This is where I am now with Xmas Carol. It's not a huge problem. It just concerns a three-day space, into which I must fit about five days worth of scenes. I'll have to compact them somehow. Sigh. I'll get it, but still: grrrrrrrrrrrr!

Today will not be an easy editing day, but I'm on it.